Archive for December 2005

Analogue Hope. This is just an Oberheim Matrix 1000 and a Line 6 DL4 Delay modeler getting to know each other. The Devil Chortles At Human Wickedness. OK, in the video for this: The camera pans in slowly during the first section of the tune to reveal the cross section of a house. On the downstairs floor I am seen watching the news. The news is bad, of course. My face is worn with care. Then, during the second section, we see the upstairs floor, where the devil, played by Bobby J (covered in red paint, moist with sweat, and in his pants) is also watching the news. He is chuckling to himself, perhaps a bit like Rod Rippin watching Only Fools And Horses. This Is The Sound Of Lavender. I think this is more DL4 and Dave’s ADAT, possibly? Has a unique smell to me. Batawanaland. This is me trying to make people like Nathan and Charlie laugh. White Smith. Here we see the White Smith at work. The Raven. This bird is mysterious in a BBC kind of way. Oh My Days. The artist finds life tough. Brazil. This is a piece for dancers. The proper, poncey kind who wear vests and flappy trousers. The Sunny Side Of The Moon. See you there! Migrants. Migration moves me greatly. It is a kind of death, but then some say death is a kind of migration. Romantik_1. This is an extract from the massive 40+ minute Romantik reel-to-reel tape, recorded during some voodoo period. I hear a new world.

We may never know whether Richard D. James is a genius, or whether he’s just gone off the boil, or whatever. Personally I’m a Selected Ambient Works 2 man. With the Analord series, however, one is forced to accept that he’s ingeniously got shot of a sizable chunk of his backlog of tracks without having the pressure of people scrutinising a new album proper. He may well have made some money out of the enterprise too. Now the last CD-R I did was Giraffe, and I’m quite proud of it still. In fact I’m a little bit worried that I may have peaked with Giraffe, because everything I’ve done since hasn’t really felt like a track on the next album. Admittedly I’ve had a lot of computer voodoo, which for various reasons has resulted in either not being able to use a PC to make music (and relying instead on reel-to-reel tape, ADAT 8-track, and even crap loops on the Line 6 DL4) or making music with a PC but in the sure knowledge that it won’t be for very long. The point is I’ve got tons of stuff but it lacks the sexy pop sheen that characterised my earlier work, perhaps, and so I’ve decided to shamelessly ape our Aphex by releasing it piecemeal. Obviously I haven’t got the cash to present eleven 12″ records in a retro culture fetish binder, so the Bumskipper project, as I’m calling it for now, will consist of a series of eleven 3″ mini CDs. They play in normal CD players, it’s just that they’re smaller and therefore, possibly, cuter. You can fit 21 minutes of audio on a 3-incher, which is OK for the Um sound on account of the artistic denseness, obviously. I’ll be releasing them over the next few months as the whim takes me, but hopefully on a monthly basis at least. Think of it as being like a magazine or something. Anyway, Bumskipper 1 is available now at Â£3. I’m kind of hoping that if you visit PayPal at http://www.paypal.co.uk and tell them you want to give pete.um
tlworld.com Â£3+50p(p&p) then that will work but otherwise get in touch at the same address and I’ll tell you how to do it cheque-styles. Or see me at an Um gig or come round my house, innit.

In addition, I’m now pleased to announce, the CDs are also available from the Tripel Records website. Simply transport yourself here:

For her birthday I thought I’d surprise the missus with a meal in Cambridge’s poshest restaurant, Midsummer House. We’d often talked about the place, and since she runs a catering business herself and I work for her, we had a professional interest too. What would it be like, this posh food? As I am always skint and reasonably mean too, I thought it might warp Sam’s mind bigtime if I whisked her in there with no warning. A hell of a lot of planning went into the making of the surprise. The key things were that the secret didn’t get out, and the babysitting issue. I am very lucky that I have friends who are prepared to put my son to bed, and a son who will be put to bed by his parent’s friends. However, as other parents will know, it could have all gone horribly wrong. The last thing I wanted was to be called away from the most deliriously expensive restaurant of all time. Also I couldn’t make a big fuss with Syd about his Mum and Dad going out to dinner because Sam would have clicked that something was up. If she knew she was in for a treat foodwise, her mind would have inevitably turned to thoughts of Midsummer House, as we have often discussed the idea in the past in a sort of “as if” way. So, even though arrangements were in hand for some three weeks prior to her birthday, I was amazed that it was still a secret on the big day, especially since she had been talking about the restaurant about a week before (out of the blue â€“ bit nerve-shredding for me). The birthday came and I got her a cheap bunch of flowers, just like she usually has to hassle me to do, and then casually announced that I was taking her out to dinner. I said it was some new place in Chesterton, just to throw her off the scent a bit. I have to say that all the pressure of the deception was starting to get to me a bit, because in my mind it all had to go exactly according to plan for this big gesture to be worth anything at all. I was going to take her for a quick drink in the Radegund, keeping it kind of low key, and then as we stepped onto Midsummer Common, suddenly drop the bomb on her. I figured this would freak her out of her fucking socks, and that was the big payback I was looking for. Up until about 7PM, it was all going to plan. At this point, feeling perhaps that she was going to have to organise her own treats to a certain extent, she told me to hop to the offy and buy some Cava. This was ever so slightly irritating because I felt like I had the treats thing in hand and also that money was literally pissing out of my pockets by this point. Anyway, I left; leaving my phone at Sam’s to charge so as to ensure maximum comms with the babysitter posse later on. Can you guess what’s coming? Yes, that’s right, the restaurant phoned to confirm while I was out, and although Sam would never normally answer my phone, for some reason (call it feminine intuition or possibly witchcraft) she did on this occasion. Naturally there was some confusion on the conversation but between Sam and Midsummer House they managed to work out that there was a surprise in the offing, and that this was now a surprise ruined. When I returned Sam looked at me with tenderness and said “Oh, I’m sorry…they phoned and I answered it…” whereupon I looked at her with a savage expression of the most consolidated rage and then fell to my knees and began to beat the mock oak panel flooring with my fist. As far as I was concerned Midsummer House had just up-ended a month of careful planning, one once-in-a-lifetime romantic gesture, and cost me anything up to Â£200. I knew the blame didn’t lie with them entirely, but you might have thought that they’d had to play their role in a few surprise birthday dinners in their long history. In spite of the fact that it was still meant to be about Sam and despite all the reassurances from her and our babysitters that it was still a wonderful surprise and that the restaurant would probably make sure our experience was extra special and possibly even furnish us with free wine I remained utterly inconsolable. In fact I was so morose I drank most of the bottle of Frexenet in an attempt to find some cheer from somewhere before I ruined the already ruined evening, not that I was making much effort to hide my feelings, as I say. Anyway, then we went to the pub and I think I had a pint and maybe a couple of gins. Funnily enough, even though I was disappointed an’ all and I should have been drunk as a horse I still felt extremely nervous about actually visiting the restaurant. It’s not as though I come from the most proletarian background of all time but I’m not very good at dealing with formality and so on and I really didn’t know what to expect from this, the most poshest of posh places.

Right, I’m going to leave it there and post this up, in the hope that people might hassle me to finish it, because most of this account has been hanging about since time. My original idea was to do something resembling a proper restaurant review (as a sort of laugh) but given the tone of what I’ve written so far, and the fact that the effects of the alcohol and the passage of time have left me with little recollection of the specifics of what we ate, it’ll probably just be more renditions of painful awkwardness as per.

OK, we all know this site is very, very old and I’m not Artist Of The Year anymore (this is a supposedly amusing reference to the YOTA button on the front page which makes me look as though I’m proud of something that makes me look like a twat) but between me and my enigmatic web-lady some progress has been made towards at least updating the MP3 section of the site. There are some new new-ish Giraffe era stuff, and some new old stuff. I’ve left a few daft things on there like “Till The Break Of Dawn” because apparently people who don’t like experimental music think it’s funny.

I’m thinking if I want to upload new stuff I’ll put it on myspace. My part of myspace is

Obviously there are some risks involved with selling your soul to the devil in return for proper ROCK POWER. Why, only yesterday I tried to fire up some Satanic rock attitude by joining my brother in a gin and tonic at 4:40PM GMT but after a couple I realized that it just wasn’t happening and I decided to capitalise on the fact that he was going out by having a rare, limited edition early night. By ten o-clock I was tucked up in bed, reading a book about the evils of American foreign policy whilst some endorphins wrapped in blankets ran across the tarmac of my brain looking a bit bewildered. Then at 10:30 the lead singer in a famous pop group texted me to enquire if he had the right number, and fifteen minutes later I got another text, from Canada, wishing me a happy birthday and telling me I was much loved. The latter text was presumably a mistake (I was born in April, even if I do have some Canadian heritage) but you can see how there’s next to no rest for the wicked. Think I might go to the pub tonight. I’m sure Bobby’ll be up for it…

Lord Charles got married yesterday and my synapses aren’t firing at all well. My brother made a speech. He was introduced by the father of the bride as the person who had lead Charlie astray. If you follow this logic through you get to Satan, via me, I presume.

Got an appointment with Dr Farrant later so I suppose I better have a bath.

As far as I’m concerned my tax situation is pretty legit but every year for the past three years they send me something saying my contributions have a shortfall and I might want to cough up in case I don’t get a pension. This year they reckon I owe them Â£97.30. Last time I got one of these letters I phoned them up and it was the typical Kafka thing where you get a friendly guy on the phone who says something like “The situation is very complicated and I am powerless to help and your options are endless but your actions may well be futile but it probably doesn’t matter or mean anything in the long run.”

Um has been played on the radio in Serbia and Montenegro.

The Wire is now streaming Um/Ascoltare material efficiently under our real names.

My 12″ vinyl LP of Ariel Pink’s Doldrums failed to arrive today but they, Cargo, did manage to send me two CD singles by a band called Louie, so I expect it’s the thought that counts.

Interesting Um gigs are materialising.

When I checked the charts on Boomkat earlier for the Electronica/Quirky sales in the last 9 months I noticed that the Um 7″ on Strange Lights was both at No. 46 and No. 54. How quirky is that? Seems to have been sorted now though…

Um was mentioned in a positive light by my chums Captain on Radio One during their encounter with Steve Lamaq. Looks like I might be playing to a crowd on the 15th.

Felix Kubin’s baby daughter has managed to be reviewed in The Wire before I have. She probably has bags of self-belief or something.

I didn’t really see much of the Mill Road Winter Fair because I would have missed Mrs Gee being delivered by rickshaw to open the proceedings and everything seemed a bit 2nd rate after that, but what I caught of the fag-end of the day had elements that I approved of. Now that we are getting used to Subway and Pizza Hut are about to open it was good to our local, multicultural trading community pulling together in celebration. Yeah, something like that.

If you go to The Wire website right now you can see links to some MP3 selections from UMM and Ascoltaire but the links don’t work.

The other week at a party I was sat next to a very drunk chappie who played a CD of his band playing at The Junction from way, way back. The guitarist was a 14 year old Jamie Lidell. It was that funky indie sound they used to call baggy.

Lidell’s new album annoys the piss out of me. It’s so cleverly arranged and musical and he really does sound a bit like one of those great singers of a different era and race. It’d be really handy to have in your house if you had some people over who weren’t really that into music. I’ve never seen Lidell live, but I’ve heard talk that he’s good. I heard a recording of something he did building up loops on the fly and it was astonishingly adept and must have been ace to watch. That’s something I always wanted to do as Um, as well as the shit he does with cameras and stuff, but I’ve never had the motivation or the balls. This is one of the reasons he gets on my tits. I guess I feel sorry for him though, ultimately.

I don’t trust that MIA LP either. That’s a very well put-together record, but her shtick winds me up. That cutesy-fighter thing. I was going to write something speculating that she’s a bit of an arse but then I read an interview and she seemed quite bearable and interesting, and could talk the walk. It’s these high- achiever types that rile me. Successes, you know?